lectured by Michael Stylianos & Lorna Lee
MS:
- Arms has changed, timing has changed, shaping has changed, music has changed... the only thing that hasn't changed is the judging.
- Choreography should excite the audience or the judges but we don't want to overload it. The judges need time to assess what the dance is about, if we overload it, it will be too massive.
- Just change the timing, we don't change the figure. Change the speed already the musicality is there.
- Change the shaping by putting high and low lines, doing lifts or drops (but not those flips that make ladies' both feet leave the floor like in rock n roll)
- Keep things classy with some extentions of arms & legs.
- Put turns or spins in btween figures.
- Add head movement, lower the centre, do figures with kicks and contractions.
- The choreography doesn't improve you long term.
- You have to have a good fundamental base.
- Understanding those principles has a little to do about history, because the principles haven't changed over the last forty years.
- The style changes, the fashion changes, the choreography changes, but the principles do not.
- There's no complicated way to do it, it is as simple as : Tracking the legs (to beautify you legs) & Making a smaller base (by so ensuring the correct weight distribution because good posture comes from correct weight placing).
- Legs do not move from the thighs. Otherwise, the knees of the moving legs are in advance of the bodies and then bringing body in the afterbeats. The knee joints should be used in a forward walk or a backward walk. The underleg moves faster than the upper leg, slaping the knees back, and make the base smaller.
- The two main areas of samba, one that with counts two all have a bounce action, while tbe other has no bouncing.
- Comes off the toes. Every second beat of samba will be a ball flat. 99% true. Apply ball flat then you'll be able to put the weight correctly.
- Judges might not see the footwork when judging but can see the body shape, and that tells you are not right.
- The quarter beat of samba has three things together: Quarter beat, minimal weight (<50% weight) and inside edge of toe or toe footwork. If you destroy one of them, you destroy your frame.
- All three quarter quarter one timing are non progressive, no moving.
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